Q & A Saturday – Can I Sell a House with Lead Paint?

Welcome to our Q & A Saturday video.

In these Q & A Videos we will answer your questions about real estate. Any real estate related topic from questions about selling your house, buying a house, real estate investor questions, land lording questions, local market questions and many others things are all fair game.

Today’s question is “Can I Sell a House with Lead Paint?“

In this video Shaun talks about some of the issues that come up when trying to sell a house that may have lead paint.

Some of the main points covered in this video are:

1) Difference between known hazards and possible ones.

2) Health issues involved with lead paint.

3) Possible financing issues.

4) What you have to disclose.

5) The proper disclosure procedures.

Lead Paint poses a major health risk, especially for pregnant women and young children. While there are a lot of regulations in place to protect people and force remediation selling a house with it is not one where, at least at this time, someone is forced to remove any of these hazards. What is required is that any known issues are disclosed and if there are not any for the seller to state they do not know of any existing hazards. This is a situation where ignorance is a good thing. J

If you do not have any knowledge of lead paint hazards then you, or your agent, need to make sure that the buyer is given the 10 page EPA lead safe pamphlet as well as any other state documents that may be required. It is fairly simple to meet the requirements.

A couple of other notes are that if the buyer tests for lead and they find hazards and do not end up making the purchase then you will then have to disclose the findings. Also if you want to remediate, or do any other work in an area that could be expected to have lead you and/or your contractors need to follow proper lead paint procedures or be subject to significant fines. Lastly if you are using the property as a rental if you have a tenant that is pregnant or has a small child you will be forced to remediate any hazards so keep this in mind if you are considering this.

Hope you enjoyed the video and leave any other questions you have about the topic below or any other topics you would like to see covered in future videos. I encourage anyone that has things they would like to talk about to let me know what they are. You can always fill out a contact us form here and put Q & A in the subject, just leave a comment with your questions below here, send an email to info@masshomesale.com, or post it on our Facebook page or Twitter account.